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America has dominated
the world of images and information through its vast media-industrial complex –
movies, TV, music, the Internet. (Gardels 110) There is hardly any corner of
the world where people have not been subject to American media influence. Given
all these influences, how do foreigners perceive the U.S.? How does this mediated
perception match the reality on the ground? And why does it matter? In this
essay, I use the context of the recent U.S. presidential elections to explore
attitudes towards the U.S. of my compatriots from Eastern Europe in order to
demonstrate how and why their views on America changed after they actually
visited the country.1 My purpose is to identify a few trends in how
‘America’ is constituted in the subjectivity of people in a newly-emerging part
of the world.

It has long been
known that the mass media (primarily Hollywood
films and television shows) have been a key means of spreading Western ideas around
the world. Now, when the access to the media is more free and easier, it might
be argued that the familiarity with America is becoming greater. For
example, during 2008 presidential campaign in the US, Barack Obama gathered donations
for the campaign through his web-site (https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/dnc08splashnd). This idea was followed by the politicians of other
countries, for example, by Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel. He even made very similar
design to Obama’s website (http://www.netanyahu.org.il/?section=StopIran:English).
However, in other respects, this turns out not to be the case, as we find
below.

Michael Eisner of Disney said in 1995 that
“the Berlin Wall was destroyed not by force of arms, but by force of Western
ideas.” Discounting the bluster of a movie moghul, one might still say that he
is right to some extent. According to Nathan Gardels, the editor of NPQ and
Global Services at Tribune Media Services International,American entertainment plays the most
important role in spreading ideologies of consumerism and political life for
those to whom these shows become metonyms for America. For example, the American
film, 12 Angry Men, by Sidney Lumet focuses on a jury's
deliberations in a capital murder case. A dissenting juror slowly manages to
convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in
court. This movie, based on the idea of justice and a fair court, was copied by
Russian film director, Nikita Mikhalkov. He took the plot and slightly changed
it according to Russian realities, but the main idea remained.

So, what are
these American idea(l)s? To give fresh coloring to this imaginative landscape,
I decided to conduct an informal survey of students from Ukraine, Russia,
and Bulgaria to gather their
views of America
prior to, and after, their visit to this country.

Before I describe
my findings, however, it is useful to provide an overview of the media scene in
Eastern Europe and the role played by American
entertainment and news programs in local media consumption. Before the 1990s,
due to the political confrontation of the Cold War, the influence of American
media on the above- mentioned countries was very low. American media was
narrowed to movies; moreover, not all the movies could be shown at that time. American
movies and tv shows which were on screens in Eastern
Europe were mainly comedies with no political coloring. However,
in 1942 the Office of War Information had created the radio broadcasting
service Voice of America. In 1947, Voice of America started broadcasting in
Russian with the intent to counter more harmful instances of Soviet propaganda
directed against American leaders and policies (Whitton 151). The Soviet Union responded by initiating aggressive,
electronic jamming of Voice of America
broadcasts. But people continued listening to this radio. The information
released over the radio along with the undisguised ban of the radio from the
government increased people’s belief in certain ideas shown in American media.

The first and
foremost idea shown and propagated through American media is the idea of
liberty – the liberty of a country as well as personal liberty. According to
Nathan Gardels, this “liberty worship” was mainly created as a factor to bring
down repressive regimes and such media programming may be said to have achieved
the pre-conditioning for such goals. Through propagating the idea of liberty, America is seen
as a really democratic and free country. Films and television programs always
showed America
as a free land, where liberty and democracy flourish. Liberty and individual freedom are a theme in
many movies and TV shows, books and records. For example, the movie Forrest Gump by Robert Zemeckis
propagates an American lifestyle, as well as the idea that everybody is equal
and anyone can reach success.

Interviewing
young people from Europe gave results that the majority of them, being exposed
to movies and other entertaining American media had certain imaginingsabout the US which turned out not to be so in
reality. Talking about politics, their imagination of the U.S. was not far from
reality, though it was rather idealized: “The U.S. is a country where state
power belongs to the people and in which the core values include but are not
limited to the freedom of speech and press”; “USA is the world’s most powerful
and influential democratic state,” though some Europeans admitted that “the
American democracy is considered to be in great danger, especially after George
Bush’s two-term presidency, that is why the 2008 elections are very important.”
After living in the U.S.,
most of the interviewees admitted that American society is not as ideal as it
seemed: though it is democratic, there are some “internal” issues which
interfere with the image of a really liberal country. According to Michael C.
Desch, the September 11 attacks and the war on terrorism have made the United States
less liberal. “Illiberal policies in the United States [include] the pursuit of
global hegemony, launching of a preventive war, imposition of restrictions upon
civil liberties in the name of national security, and support for torture under
certain circumstances” (Desch 8).

Socially and
culturally, Europeans imagined the U.S. as a country where “people are really
fond of burgers and cola”; “ a country of workers and money, where everybody
cares only about himself/herself”; “a country of parties”; “a country where
those who are underage ask to buy alcohol for them”; “a country of “war”
between African-Americans and whites,” etc. All these stereotypes were created
by the U.S.
itself through the media. Among all the interviewees only one said that it was
always her dream to travel to the U.S. and live there for some time,
hence she read a lot about it and its people and her idea of the country was
very close to what she got to see later. That means that if people are not
really interested in the issue and do not do research for themselves, they
believe all the images created by the media and take the implied messages for
granted.

The second
important idea propagated through American media is the notion of the American
Dream. Much has been said about this, but mostly for what it means for the
citizens of this country rather than for outsiders. I found that non-Americans
are no less vulnerable to the seductions of the American dream. According to
interviews with some young people from Eastern Europe, their perception of the
American Dream changed after they traveled to the US. Because of the media to which
they were exposed, Europeans imagined the American Dream as comprised of consumerism
and affluence: “lawn, house, family, a few cars, picnics, baseball, burgers,
smoothie,” “fulfilling of all the dreams,” “money,” and “immigrants who left
their countries seeking a better life in the U.S.” After interviewees traveled
to the U.S., lived here for some time and experienced life here for themselves,
their perceptions changed:they felt
that “the American Dream is pride and family values,” “it is harmony attained
by a person,” “it is the feeling of being American,” “it is based on freedom of
thought and belief leading to success and recognition.” The change in their
opinions is based on the fact that those who traveled to the U.S. saw a very
different picture from that of their own countries. The majority of the people
they encountered belonged to the educated middle class which tends to be
prosperous. This is not the case in most of the Eastern European countries.
Besides, here Eastern Europeans were exposed to a huge number of television
channels which give a lot of diverse information. This is impossible in their
home countries, as they do not have so many TV channels.

Speaking of the
2008 presidential campaign, the interviewees were able to access a huge amount
of information about political candidates and their political, social and
personal lives. At the same time such information could not be possible in such
countries as Russia,
for example. Moreover, in comparison with Russian and Ukrainian election
campaigns, American candidates have official debates, which were widely covered
in press and in all the media. According to Justin Lewis, “news media have a
lot of power, because they choose what questions to ask and what questions not
to ask,”thus playing an agenda-setting
role. “Public concern about issues tends to follow media coverage of those
issues, rather than any changes in the real world” (Lewis).

During 2008
election campaign, there was a huge political impact through Facebook, which
European youth also felt. According to Reader’s
Digest, a popular magazine outside its country of origin, “poll shows that
nearly half of young people have attempted to influence the vote of a friend or
peer in this election, often by using Facebook, and that one-fourth of
Millennials have lobbied one or more of their parents on politics” (Cannon).
Thus, in the context of recent US
presidential elections we see the significant role of the media in shaping
people’s opinions.

Studying the
views of Eastern Europeans about America we can conclude that they
are mainly shaped by the media people were exposed to. In the U.S. they saw
great cultural and social differences from the views they had prior to their
arrival. As in all enduring mythologies, the distance between ‘America’ and America remains a real one.

Notes

1This is an informal survey of only
a handful of respondents and therefore not statistically significant. I hope to
expand this sample and consider in more detail how cross-cultural perception is
shaped by American media abroad.